Inovação e Relações Universidade-Indústra em Países de Desenvolvimento Intermédio

Abstract

Portugal has an active population with low levels of education, a specialized manufacturing pattern based on traditional sectors and firms of small and very small size. These characteristics have a strong impact on the improvement of innovations and on the university-industry relations which have to be understood differently from the developed countries. This article intends to know what are the basic conditions for firms be innovative, in this very specific context, what type of innovations are they able to produce and what are the circumstances in which they can develop advantageous relations with the academic world. We conclude that the basic condition for these to happen is a certain accumulation of knowledge inside firms. An increasing in the accumulation of this knowledge goes hand in hand with the improvement of innovations and with the integration capacity of firms in the innovation space, notion which is proposed in alternative to the one of innovation system.